A group of artists, community members and family and friends of the victims of the Lewiston mass shooting are honoring and remembering the victims in a new art installation at LA Arts.
The project has been in the works for the two years since the shooting, which took place in October 2023, and is a collective community project.
The sculpture reaches almost to the ceiling of the gallery, and visitors are invited to walk through and view the inside of the structure.
Jen McDermott is one of the three artists that helped lead the project. She said the outside of the sculpture is supposed to be bright and full of light, with blue fabric representing the flowing Androscoggin River and glowing roof panels made by local Lewiston residents that depict what they love about their community.
“The goal is to have an exterior that really brings about hope. And it also does talk about those fleeting moments of joy that we can experience,” she said.
The inside is darker, with 16 panels that create a circle, one each for the shooting victims. Each panel is decorated with handmade yarn forget-me-not flowers, one for each year the victim was alive. A local high school student spent the summer crocheting flowers. Friends and family of the victims were invited to illustrate the ceiling of the structure to show things the victims loved.
Virginia Dearani was the community liaison for the project, and organized art workshops for Lewiston and Auburn residents, many of whom were students, to create the roof panels about their communities.
“I think they really were excited to know they were contributing to something bigger. So even if they didn't have lots of details of the memories [of the shooting], they knew it was a big moment in time,” Dearani said.
McDermott said she hopes this installation plays a positive role in the healing process for the Lewiston community affected by the shooting.
“When doing a project like this, certainly we hope that it has an ingredient that can lend to a part of their healing, but we know that that's a lifelong journey, and that you know that they can look upon this moment and might hold a little bit of light in the darkness of their experience,” she said.
The installation will be on display at LA Arts in Lewiston through Jan. 17, 2026.
